Gold vs. trees

[Narz]

Why not extract the gold and then replant the trees afterwards? Keep a few patches of old growth to help provide a seed population for natural regrowth of all the plant species.

Paid for with all the gold money?

Besides, you can't just "replant" a forest. If you clearcut enough of it it's never the same again. Animal & plant species may be destroyed, it's not just all about the trees?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I was under the impression that it was extremely difficult to regrow a rainforest because of the soil.

 

[luiz]

Two questions to the OP:

1) How did he reach the conclusion that we have reached "Earth Overshoot day"? This seems like an impossible calculation to me.

2) He says it's well known that the Amazon is the "lungs of the world". I thought just the opposite was well known - that the Amazon and other rain forests actually consume all O2 they generate, and that the true "lungs of the world" are sea plants.

 

[G-Max]

environmentalism over ecologism.

Say what?

 

[luiz]

The Amazon, despite being understood to be the ‘Lungs of the World’ is assigned a low economic value and therefore the logic of the market is to obliterate it and convert it into more cold bars of bullion sitting in bank vaults. This economy is fundamentally stupid.

Rainforests are also often called the "Earth's lungs"; however, there is no scientific basis for such a claim as tropical rainforests are known to be essentially oxygen neutral.[11][12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_rainforest#Characteristics

I must question the expertise of the folks who have written the OP article.

[Additionally, what is destroying the Amazon is the expansion of soybean farms and cattle ranches, not gold mining. Research is not the strong point of that group].

 

[Narz]

[Additionally, what is destroying the Amazon is the expansion of soybean farms and cattle ranches, not gold mining. Research is not the strong point of that group].

Alot of things are destroying the Amazon.

 

[berkut]

You can sit on Gold.

Maybe we could solve this problem by basing our currency on in ground trees.

carbon credids are a good idea

[Additionally, what is destroying the Amazon is the expansion of soybean farms and cattle ranches, not gold mining. Research is not the strong point of that group].

That is actualy destroying the Cerrado

Alot of things are destroying the Amazon.

What's destroying the most are the burnings and people faking property documents of reserves areas.

 

[Cutlass]

I was under the impression that it was extremely difficult to regrow a rainforest because of the soil.

It tends to result in the soil being destroyed to the point where regrowth would take centuries. If possible at all.

 

[luiz]

Alot of things are destroying the Amazon.

Yeah, and some are more important than others. Gold mining is trivial compared to soybeans and cattle.

That is actually destroying the Cerrado

Well, the same things which are destroying the cerrado are destroying the Amazon. The two states where the Amazon is dying faster, Rondônia and Pará, are respectively the new soybean and cattle frontiers. I have been to both on business, so I have driven along their roads and flied at low altitudes on small planes, and it is very clear that soybeans are now where the Amazon once was in Rondônia and the same goes for cattle ranches in Pará. Southern Pará in particular is now a big savanah, it is damn hard to see any Amazon there. I go a lot to Marabá on business.

 

[BasketCase]

I already dealt with this goobledegook statement in another thread. A typical America in the 21st century has a larger eco-footprint than two kings, a duke & fourteen jesters in medieval times (Source).

Source is biased and therefore unacceptable.

Sorry to break up the quote but:
Yeah, we need to keep innovating

Stop there and you've got it. A "progressive" economy has nothing to do with it.

Humans have been steadily and exponentially increasing the energy use per person, which also means environmental impact per person.

The first half is exactly right; the second half is wrong. Human beings have been using more and more energy--which we're getting with less planetary impact per person. Keep reading.

The average person today now consumes the same as a blue whale. A BLUE WHALE.

Which means precisely what??? A blue whale eats around 8,000 pounds of food per day. That doesn't tell you anything about the impact of the whale on the planet. How much ocean does a whale require to get enough food to stay alive? Somewhere on the order of many square miles (it gets complicated because they feed in three-dimensional space and also migrate). Whereas a human being gets everything they have in life from around four percent of a single square mile (a lot less than a medieval king....). Yes, human do consume more--but we need far less land per person to produce the stuff we consume. Modern technology is the reason; past human beings produced less stuff, and did more damage to the planet in the process of producing it. The planet didn't suffer, because there were fewer people.

Here's a classical economic principle in action. As we have increased efficiency, we have increased total consumption.

Increased efficiency and total consumption are unrelated. Nevertheless, you're correct in that total consumption is the problem. Doesn't matter how efficient everybody is if there are too many people. If there were only a million people living on Earth, everybody could have six SUV's, a coal-fired power plant, and eat fourteen cheeseburgers every day, and the environment wouldn't even notice.

Total consumption is too high, in spite of reduced impact per person.

 

[Narz]

Source is biased and therefore unacceptable.

Putting that as source was a joke.

 

[Hygro]

First, "progressive" to mean "that which progresses". Not everything is about political identity.

Second, your argument does not take into account economics. Increased efficiency has lead to a greater total impact per person. Here's where you can start http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

And here's what you can watch to know what else I'm talking about
http://fora.tv/2011/07/25/Why_Cities_Grow_Corporations_Die_and_Life_Gets_Faster

Spoiler :

Your argument is that we use less land. Yes we use a smaller area per person, but this is a false argument to equate area per person with environmental damage. Hunter gatherers needed the greatest amount of land to support each person, and they had a negligible environmental effect. They used few resources and had almost no impact. But they used the most land area per person! Land area per person is a poor measure of environmental impact.

Here's what you aren't getting. Increased efficiency might mean we get more out of what we're using. But the economic result is that we use more total. If a person is using more, total, then he is using more of the environment, which of course means he has a greater environmental impact. You literally agreed with my statement that each person uses more total resources than ever (regardless of its efficiency) only to deny the tautology I wrote rephrasing the exact same thing in different words.

This is impossible unless your only metric is how much square footage each person needs to survive, as how much harm they do to their environment.

 

[Patroklos]

I invest it tropical hardwood tree stands instead of gold, 20 years between harvests. Solves two problems at once.

The tree farm I use has created so much habitat that monkey's and jaguars have taken it up as a home. They had not been seen in the area for decades previously (its on old ranch land).

 

[BasketCase]

First, "progressive" to mean "that which progresses". Not everything is about political identity.

Different people have conflicting ideas of what is "progress".

Second, your argument does not take into account economics. Increased efficiency has lead to a greater total impact per person.

No, it hasn't. Jevon's Paradox is theoretical.

Total human population is increasing, at an accelerating rate, and most of this population growth is happening in technologically backwards nations. At the same time, the most severe environmental damage is occurring in the least technologically developed nations. The U.S., on the other hand, is always getting cleaner despite its increasing population. These things are not theoretical. They're fact. Overpopulation is the source of the problem; the source of the problem must be addressed. Nothing else will work.

 

[Hygro]

Cleaner air came from political, not economic choices and doesn't change the fact that we still have a greater total impact on our environment per person.

Also, yes, different people have different ideas of progress. I believe you and I both used it in the context of progressing innovation in an economy that builds on itself. Pick your battles, Basketcase.

 

[BasketCase]

No need to pick. I fight all of them.

Cleaner air doesn't come from politics. And clean air doesn't come from economic choices either. A cleaner environment comes from technology. In a world where business can't be controlled (which is pretty much the way most industries have run for most of human history), the only way to reduce environmental impact per person is to make it economical to do so. And as the oil industry (post-Deepwater Horizon), the nuclear industry (post-Fukushimi, or however that's spelled) and the Occupy Wall Street protests are demonstrating, politics and economics (and protests) are fail at accomplishing that. Only reliable way to get humans to clean up is to make it easy and cheap.

Por ejemplo: farming. Before the invention of fallow-field and crop rotation, what did farmers do? They farmed the hell out of the land, every season, until it went sour. Then they moved. Because it was the easiest known thing to do. That was the greater environmental impact. Fallow-field farming and crop rotation kept the land useful over the long term, leading to higher yields with less work--and with less land--and less environmental impact on that land.

Por ejemplo dos: mining. Before anybody came up with the idea of digging a mine shaft, they simply did the strip mining deal. They had to mine more land to get the same amount of gold. More impact.

Por ejemplo tres: fuels. In the beginning, people burned trees for fuel. Lots of smoke, lots of felled trees over a lot of square mileage. Ancient times = more impact. Per person. Now, why did the human race move on to coal, when at the time coal was discovered, there was still plenty of wood all over the place?? Because coal produced more energy with less work. Side benefit: coal burns more cleanly than wood. And after coal, why did the human race move on to oil? When there was still plenty of coal all over? Same process again. Easier to get more bang for the buck. More amp for the acre. And oil is cleaner than coal.

doesn't change the fact that we still have a greater total impact on our environment per person.

I haven't seen any actual evidence to substantiate that. Whereas I just produced three examples to support my point. Improved technology leads to lower environmental impact per person.


Side theme: Jevon's Paradox. Improved efficiency doesn't cause people to want more stuff. Whoever came up with the JP had their cause and effect all wrong. Truth is, people ALWAYS want more stuff, efficiency or not. They always have. Bigger house, safer food supply, bigger guns, more jewels, more women. Humans dreamed of flying centuries before flight was actually invented. Same with space travel. Same with cell phones; we wanted those (our wishful thinking taking the form of those nifty communicators in Star Trek) many years before cell phones even made it onto the drawing board.

Improved efficiency doesn't lead to people wanting more stuff. It's simply human nature to want more stuff.

 

[really]

I'm thinking of planting some marginal farm land / bog with trees to be used as firewood in the future. I haven't given it much thought other than it would be nice to have some woodland and that it might be handy to have firewood in plentiful supply when I retire.

I could probably start coppicing it much sooner - I would probably plant Ash with some willow in the wetter parts.

The main problems would be drainage/ risk of flooding / rotting roots and how to get the wood out.

 

[Leoreth]

No need to pick. I fight all of them.

Cleaner air doesn't come from politics. And clean air doesn't come from economic choices either. A cleaner environment comes from technology. In a world where business can't be controlled (which is pretty much the way most industries have run for most of human history), the only way to reduce environmental impact per person is to make it economical to do so. And as the oil industry (post-Deepwater Horizon), the nuclear industry (post-Fukushimi, or however that's spelled) and the Occupy Wall Street protests are demonstrating, politics and economics (and protests) are fail at accomplishing that. Only reliable way to get humans to clean up is to make it easy and cheap.

You mean industries would be spending money in things like smoke filter that have absolutely zero benefit for them, without being forced to by law? Why?

Por ejemplo tres: fuels. In the beginning, people burned trees for fuel. Lots of smoke, lots of felled trees over a lot of square mileage. Ancient times = more impact. Per person. Now, why did the human race move on to coal, when at the time coal was discovered, there was still plenty of wood all over the place?? Because coal produced more energy with less work. Side benefit: coal burns more cleanly than wood. And after coal, why did the human race move on to oil? When there was still plenty of coal all over? Same process again. Easier to get more bang for the buck. More amp for the acre. And oil is cleaner than coal.

And wind is cleaner than oil. I'm surprised not to see the oil energy sector switch completely to wind then. Maybe it's not the cleanliness of an energy source that make it used, but the energy it contains, no matter how environment unfriendly it is, that make energy producers switch?

Side theme: Jevon's Paradox. Improved efficiency doesn't cause people to want more stuff. Whoever came up with the JP had their cause and effect all wrong. Truth is, people ALWAYS want more stuff, efficiency or not. They always have. Bigger house, safer food supply, bigger guns, more jewels, more women. Humans dreamed of flying centuries before flight was actually invented. Same with space travel. Same with cell phones; we wanted those (our wishful thinking taking the form of those nifty communicators in Star Trek) many years before cell phones even made it onto the drawing board.

Improved efficiency doesn't lead to people wanting more stuff. It's simply human nature to want more stuff.

So you agree with Jevon's Paradox at least as much as increased efficiency will make the amount of consumed environment stay the same.

Let's assume our current technology allows us to get x stuff out of y resources and as a whole we turn Y resources into X stuff. Now better technology allows us to get c*x stuff out of y resources. Will we, in your opinion:

1) Continue to use Y resources to get c*X or
2) Decide we're still happy with X and only use Y/c?

By your own argumentation it's (1).

 

[El_Machinae]

I think that improved efficiency is great. It leads to compounding returns, which grand. That means increased total wealth. With increased total wealth, it's easier to afford the externalities associated with your harmful activity and it's easier to set aside protected areas (that won't be consumed with efficiency).

It's hard to demand people set aside protected areas (or pay for their externalities) when they're at impoverished levels of efficiency. But once they're not impoverished, you can start investing some of your wealth into making the wealth sustainable.